The Deserters by Mathias Enard, translated from the French by Charlotte Mandell (International Booker Prize 2026) “…the trace of violence is never easily erased.”

 

“…he’d like to tear the war out of him like a dead scab - the rifle is still on his knees, though, the memories inside him…” (p. 108)

I kept looking for a connection between the bedraggled soldier coming out of the bush, covered in slime and filth and dried blood, to the story of Paul, and Maja, and their daughter, Irina. 

I think the best connection is the bond they share in suffering the effects of war.

We don’t know the war from which the soldier deserted; I can’t help but wonder if it was WWII which had so much effect on Paul. But, does it matter which war? They’re all horrifying. And Mathias Enard makes mention of so many: WWII, the attack on the Towers in New York City, Russian invading Ukraine, and even now we find ourselves involved with Iran.

Paul Heudeber, director of the Mathematics Institute of the Academy of Sciences in GDR, is a politician, a mathematician, a communist, the lover of Maja, and the father of Irina. Maja is a politically active woman from the West, and their daughter narrates their story for us.

It is particularly poignant how she speaks of the love between her parents. Though never married, they never stopped loving each other.

“You are my malady - my passion has the malady of infinity, my love can only be written with your name. There is no other way to designate love but to say your name. Come back to me soon.” ~Paul, in a letter to Maja (p. 42)

They are not the only couple in the novel, however. The deserting soldier has found a woman, walking with a wounded donkey and several packs of her belongings. Her hair is shorn, her fear is great, with reason, we learn later on. Together they make it to the Black Rock, to what they hope will be utter escape and freedom. 

I think one of the points Enard is so eloquently making is that there is no escape. There is no freedom, in a world which always seems so capable of producing a new war. A new way of wounding one another. We can only hope, and search out peace, as the soldier tries to do.

“…after the border will I be returned to myself, will my wounds be erased, I’ll look for a place to heal, a place to get cured, a place of oblivion.” (p. 133)

May he find it. May all our wounds be erased. 

The Wax Child by Olga Ravn, translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken (International Booker Prize 2026)

 

“We knew so little about the Devil in those days, now everyone knows so much about him.” (p. 42)

The Wax Child has been growing on me, holding me in a power all its own. At first, I thought, “Okay, witches. The seventeenth century. How is this relevant, and who cares?”

(I knew it was a mistake to read The Remembered Soldier first.)

But, now I keep thinking of The Wax Child. Indeed, it has woven a spell over me, just as the incantations of the women themselves were spoken periodically throughout the book. Here are a few:

“Take a swallow bird. Take her heart and roast it on a  stick. Take then the swallow’s tongue and place it under your own. Eat then the swallow’s heart. Carry with you thereafter the swallow’s tongue, and whenever someone is angry with you place the swallow’s tongue underneath your own and speak to the person who is angry and her anger toward you will at once be stilled.” p. 26

“Cast some blood of a jar into the fire, so that it makes a smell, then all the girls of the house will piss themselves. Or  give them blood from a bat and those who have mixed with men will play piss themselves.” p. 61

“Take the water from the eye of a stallion that has not yet been led to a mate, and with it wet your own eyes, then all can be seen that would otherwise be unseeable, and this three mornings in succession.” p. 76

Jomfru Christenze Axelsdattar Kruckow, a noblewoman, has fashioned a doll made of wax. It is this doll, who cannot open her lips, or move her mouth, which tells us the tale of Christenze, Maren, Apelone, and Dorte. They do unspeakable, unchristian things. They meet in secret, and their very existence seems to threaten the men around them. They ultimately meet their demise at the hand of these men; all but Christenze are tied to a ladder and burned alive. Christenze herself is beheaded.

“Since they (the women) are weak, they find a secret and easy manner of vindicating themselves by witchcraft. Where there are many women, there are many witches.”  (p. 73)

Ah, now I see the point. Judging by appearances, judging out of fear, judgment of any kind cannot be made blanketly, with any amount of accuracy. Ravn calls into question men who judge falsely, creating what is termed feminist fiction. But, I think it is a more widely applicable problem in our society.

The mood she has created, blending her imagination with fact, is commendable. The novel reads as a poem, and a disturbingly horrific one at that.

(Thank you to New Directions for sending me a copy for review.)

Taiwan Travelogue by Yang Shuang-zi, translated by Lin King (International Booker Prize 2026)

Reading anything after The Remembered Soldier was bound to be a disappointment, and as such this is the spirit with which I opened Taiwan Travelogue. I’m not terribly interested in Taiwan, any more than any other country, and yet, every once in a while I came across a quote which struck my jaded point of view.

Consider this passion to record one’s thoughts, so similar to my own:

“What drove me to write was neither a political agenda nor money, but a simple desire to record my observations whenever I saw or heard anything interesting, or whenever I felt moved to reflect on something…Over time, piles of notebooks and scraps covered my desktop and drawers, and slowly consumed the study’s bookshelves, windowsills, and floors.” p. 73

Thus speaks Aoyama, a young novelist who has traveled to Taiwan to document the country. She has been given a translator, named Chizuro, to accompany her. It is through their eyes that we glimpse Taiwan when it was a colony of Japan. Many of our glimpses depict food. It seems, in fact, that most of the novel is about the food they consumed, for Aoyama is passionate about it.

“My gluttony isn’t limited to exquisite or expensive foods, either-whenever I start craving something, anything, my stomach burns with this insatiable greed until I get my hands in whatever it is. That’s the monster in me.” p. 83

I would say that the monster within her concerns more than food. The homosexual undercurrent in this novel begins in a fairly subtle way, and then becomes more and more pronounced. I am not interested in reading about lesbian mentality, especially when the writing itself is not very good. There is no subtle nuance, there is no real plot, nor, to me, much of a redeeming point in Taiwan Travelogue. Ultimately, it both bored, and disappointed, me. 

Read it, if you want to read endless descriptions of food, on every page, along with Aoyama’s ever growing attraction to her translator. How it won the National Book Award, let alone a place on the International Booker Prize long list, is beyond me.

The Remembered Soldier by Anjet Daanje, translated from the Dutch by David McKay (International Booker Prize 2026)

 

…she leans over the retouching desk restoring other people’s lives. 

I think, more than any other line, this quotation encapsulates The Remembered Soldier. Yet, how can one fragment of a sentence thoroughly impart the impact of this book? It can’t.

When I first saw the title, and the cover, on the International Booker Prize, I balked. “I do not want to read a book about war,” I said to myself. But, The Remembered Soldier is about so much more than war. It is about memory, and identity, being a soldier, and perhaps most importantly of all, being married.

An American author would come out and tell you everything boldly: Julienne found Amand, after searching for eight years, in an asylum; he’d lost his memory, but she claims to be his wife; going home together, they forge a life together. That wouldn’t be much of a story, would it? 

Fortunately, it is not nearly so simple. The nuances must be carefully gleaned to solve this puzzle. We must live through his memories, or lack thereof, and while relying on Julienne’s stories for background we wonder if perhaps she is lying, just to keep him with her.

Julienne says marriage is just like having children, it’s for life, she says, he’s not a dog you can get rid of if you’re not satisfied, and her candor is so disarming that he almost wishes he really were her husband.

Is he? Isn’t he? We don’t know, although we read of their life as a married couple. He builds her a special table to retouch the photographs she takes, as photography is their business. He wakes up next to her in their shabby bed, gets the coal, picks the milk up from outside the door, heats the water so she can wash. In a thousand ways, they are one. 

And then, he must pursue the vision he has, of Kathe, in yellow…

And he dreams he finds not Kathe, but the war, and he realizes that’s what he’s been looking for the whole time, it’s just that he gave his war a woman’s name, and her body is ravaged and cold and infertile and she’s married to death. 

Don’t be deceived. Read on, my friend, to find out who Kathe is. Who Julienne is. Who the remembered soldier is. And as you’re reading, prepare to be mesmerized by writing the likes of which I have never known. This is a book which will I never forget, a mystery I would never have conceived on my own, the quality of which I am unable to accurately describe.

In my opinion, it is the only true contender for the International Booker Prize 2026, and most certainly ought to be declared the winner.